Half the world away.

Chapter 9

"We have a newcomer with us today. Welcome, please introduce yourself if you're comfortable."

"Umm, yeah, sure," Harry cleared his throat and sat up a bit straighter, "My name is Harry and I'm here to work through my addiction and continue sobriety."

"Hello Harry," the others greeted him with a smile and then brought their focus back to Mike.

"We are very happy that you are here. I was planning on making this session, slash meeting, into a reflection time. You can all close your eyes for a moment and focus on my words." Everyone closed their eyes, Harry going last to see that he wouldn't be the only one. "Good. I want you to picture the most important thing to you, in your life. It could be a person, an animal, an object, or a job. Anything that means a whole lot to you. I'll give you a minute to think about it, and when you find it, really try to feel the emotions coming to the surface, let them be there, feel them in your body."

Harry tried to picture what meant most to him. What would he be most sad about if he lost. At first he thought about Niall, but he'd already lost Niall. Then he thought about Louis, but that was almost laughable, thinking Louis could be the most important person in his life. He circled back to his family and focused on his parents. Anne in particular. He felt a smile spread over his face when he thought about her warm hugs and how she still sometimes tucked him in at night.

"If you now have your important foundation, I want you to imagine how a continued addiction might affect them."

His mom would be sad, for sure. She didn't birth him, raise him, love him, for him to kill himself with alcohol at eighteen-years-old. He gave his heart a slight ache when he really thought about it, and the possible pain he'd caused her.

"As I hope you realise, your problems and your way of handling them, don't only affect you, but everything in your life. Especially the things closest to you."

He had been selfish. He knew that. He'd always known that... just not consciously known.

"Now I want you to choose. Alcohol or that important thing?"

Easy. It was his mom, every time.

"Might seem easy to choose the most important thing, does it not?" Mike continued, "so why don't you?"

Why doesn't he?... good fucking question.

"It's hard. But with determination, you can succeed in anything you want. Even the most difficult of challenges. And this one can only be challenged by you. You have the ability to choose," Mike finished before declaring, "you can open your eyes now."

When Harry blinked his eyes open, he saw that some people had tears in their eyes. Feelings had come to the surface for Harry too, but he didn't feel sad. More...guilty. He left him with an ache in his chest.

"Good. This time, we're not going to speak about whatever you were thinking about. I just want you to keep the feeling of it in mind next time you feel like having a drink, okay. You all did amazing," he stood up from his chair and walked towards a table at the corner of the room. The meeting was held in an aula at the elementary school in the center of Manchester. All the chairs and tables had been pushed to the side. Everyone, except for Mike, was sitting on pillows, bean bags and blankets on the floor.

Mike returned with a stack of white paper, on top of the stack was a small box filled with pens. In his left hand, he held a tray filled with different cookies.

"I think you're gonna like this. It helped me when I was in recovery," he placed the stuff on the floor in the middle of their circle.

Wait so... Mike had been in recovery, like, for alcoholism?